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Imagine a world where all of epic is one land, scaled to be one server!!! Epic home servers are islands with a CR nerf, safe merchants, and a prime target to the enemy! There is no boarders to cross and /who displays a constant player count for all of epic. All of the epic lands are magicaly combined into one server!

I am not sure this is even possible but it would fix alot of the problems with epic in general, and everyone would keep there lands. If it's even possible to merg all of the epic servers into one xanadu or smaller sized map? Possibly this would fix the problems with keeping servers up, one epic server to serve all?

"home server islands" would keep the same basic rules in a zone as they have now for merchants and kingdom players.

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To be honest I didn't see anything about portal delay in the other thread, Not that I read it very carefully but reducing it seems like an awful idea to me since it will significantly reduce the amount of boat traffic between servers (Imagine a game w/o the delay, only enemies would have to use boats to get to your server, as even bulk transfer of goods is easier/safer with wagons and just portalling over a few times)

EDIT:No local lists on elevation: YES! It will be very interesting to see how this affects pvp, people can argue about it being good or bad, but in the end only trying it out will show us the effects. This will make the game a whole lot more exciting I hope.

The Valrei changes seem like a good start, it is a bit of a shame to see a full deity being reduced to a demi god, but it does look like it will be more fair on the board for now. Might even be able to use her board representation as a prototype for a player deity should one ascend.

Remove CR nerf: I'm neutral towards this. There have been cases where it worked significantly in favor of a homeserver in fights, but there have also been enough cases where the defending force on the homeserver actually needed the CR nerf to bridge the gap in skills and experience. Maybe change it so there is a CR nerf only in a certain (large) radius around starter deeds?

Ele map reset: For now I'd say a big NO. If you start making changes to the way Epic works, do them one by one so we can observe the effects of each change and actually trace it back to that change. Tweak one variable at a time. Resetting the map is one of the most drastic changes you can make to the game and moreover it is irreversible, I'd say wait at least a year with a poll to give time for the other pvp tweaks to settle.

F2P on Ele .... This would suck big time, it will result in lots of spy alts everywhere unless there is a good mechanic to prevent f2p players from getting any info on enemy activity (this seems impossible without making f2p so dreadfully boring that it'd be useless to begin with. I'm aware that on Chaos there's a mechanic to prevent spying, but when I made a f2p account there it seemed very buggy still.

An ingame map? As in a minimap? I don't know about others but I've never felt the need for this in Wurm, a big fun factor for me is not knowing where an attack is coming from. Especially without local lists this would be amazing, ambushes would really be ambushes.

The ability in navigating around the world is one of the true player skills (i.e. not measurable in numbers) that makes wurm unique and is another big fun factor for me. Getting lost is (from what I've seen and read in posts about wurm on other websites) one of the biggest charms (and curses) Wurm has to offer.

There is something missing though. All these changes address issues that are relevant for people playing on Epic right now. It will affect the already existing player base and (I think) most of these features will be embraced by the community. However, it does not make Epic more appealing to people that don't currently play Epic, it does not introduce this big "Epic only" thing that is needed to draw players from other clusters. This (in my opinion) remains a very important issue.

Nor does it do something about the ever prevalent issue of the home server population being very separate from Elevation activities. Most people on a home server don't give a about Hota or "big group of enemies sighted digging dirt in the middle of the steppe". I think there need to be more mechanics and activities to bond home servers to their template kingdom on Elevation. These features should not oblige home server players on Epic to pvp, but they should be prominent enough to make it clear to new players that even home servers are different from Freedom.

Edited March 5, 2015 by Monokles

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I am not sure what you are planning here you say that the home servers will not get reset but then you talk about home server like islands on a main server with elevation. So where is the CR being dropped from the home servers or the new islands?

If you are dropping the CR penalty from the existing home servers then why keep them what is the point of having them?

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The only thing that sounds very bad is making Elevation F2P. Players who want to try out Epic mechanics can always start out on the home server, and they have the ability to teleport to Elevation if they prem up. F2P players starting out on Elevation are useless, they cannot PvP, they cannot make a house in any safe environment, they can only join a deed and sit there for a bit until they decide to prem up. There will also be a lot of abuse possibilities with alts, even if we have no local (griefing deeds, much more storage alts, alts used to harass raiders etc)

All the other things might be worth a try at the least. It might be a good idea to try out some of the ideas and check again after a month or so and see what everyone says.

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The poll for the reset sounds like a great way to finally decide what to do.

I still feel Elevation should be an everchanging map on its own through valrei events and player actions.

CR nerf and /who changes sound great, so much metagaming we can leave behind us.

Removing local tabs is interesting, but I feel like it would handicap us. Playing with sound off will no longer be an option. Checking if all your people are near too.

I feel like decreasing the range of local tab would help instead, so you can see and shoot players before they appear in your local.

Valrei missions definitely need a fix, and the way people are rewarded too.

Free-to-play Elevation sounds horrible. So many things alts can ruin even without a local tab. And 20fs players won't help much in PvP anyway.

I like how JK have two god patrons, gives flavour to the game. Would rather see it balanced in a different way than crippling Vynora.

Perhaps buff Magranon and Libila, let them move faster, a chance to be unaffected by trap/slow tiles or more allies on the map.

I can't see how removing local from elevation would make more pvp. Quite the opposite I think it will be damaging to pvp. Maybe changing the size of local to 40 tiles instead of 80, or something like that. But complete removal sounds horrible.

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If the removal of local becomes permanent then you should never merge home servers with elevation.

No local means that a new player will have absolutely no chance to hide when a group of enemies get close while they will be able to track him down quickly using LitD. Such a change would simply increase the number of victims (for rank and affinity farming) instead of the number of fighters. It also makes reveal creatures more important and you will eventually need to give it to libila too.

Merging the home servers would not end well (you have already seen how some people treated the home servers in the past and had to take action twice, removing home server protections would simply make the work of such groups easier). It would also mean that elevation would have to become open to f2p too (expecting from new players to join a premium only, heavy pvp server in a cluster that they haven't seen how it works sounds like a joke to me) but I doubt that this is a good idea.

As for the /who, valrei missions and CR nerf thing, I think that it's a good step although I would prefer changing the CR nerf for raiders with a CR buff for low skill defenders.